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Help Me I'm New To Comics

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Alright, in that case he might like Jeff Smith's Bone as well. It's a fantasy story with some cartoonish elements, but it's also fairly intricate and engrossing. There perhaps a couple of scary scenes, but nothing that'll traumatize a fairly mature 8 year old.

Along with Marvel Adventures, Mini Marvels is also worth a look, although for some sad reason Marvel hasn't reprinted the Ultimate Collection digest. Some of the jokes might go over his head but it's very clean and is very similar to Calvin and Hobbes in how kids and adults can love it.

I'm not new to comics at all, but I haven't bought any for about 20 years.

Tomorrow I'm going to a shopping centre and plan to pick up a trade paperback/graphic novel or two. I want to get back into comics a little. I know the 'big events' such as Civil War vaguely, so I don't think I want to read older stuff to get up to speed - I just want to find the best of the current issues.

I love all of the classic Marvel teams/characters - X-men, Avengers, Thor, Cap, Spidey and so on.

Now obviously I could just find some Ultimate trade paperback or the most recent X-men one, but what would people recommend? Not for any specific purpose, just what have been the best Marvel trades of 2011?

Thanks.

poshniallo on December 2011

I figure I could take a bear.

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Thomamelas Locks are like pretty ladies. You need to practise to know them. Registered Userregular

Brubakers run on Cap has been excellent. The Winter Solider trade is a good place to start his run with it. If you'll listen to a non-Marvel suggestion, then Astro City. It's amazing. Quid once told me that he hates capes. I gave him Astro City. He admitted he was in error. Busik's run on Avenger's is pretty good too. Avenger's Assemble would be a good place to start there.

But outside of that, they have New X-Men Ultimate collections (three of them) that collect Grant Morrison's run that really brought me back into comics 10 years ago. If you read comics in the 90's then went away, Morrison basically moved the X-Men forward more in three years than from the whole decade of the 90's. A lot of recent X-Men stuff I can't recommend that's in trade right now, but they just restarted the whole line with Uncanny X-Men and Wolverine and the X-Men if you want to pick up the regular issues.

Like Thomamelas wrote Avengers Assemble is also a great place to start with Avengers, Busiek makes it incredibly easy to jump into the Avengers. It is definitely the best bang for the buck price to page wise of anything from Marvel in terms of recent stories.

And I know you only mentioned Marvel, but I would be remiss if I did not plug Batman: The Black Mirror, it was easily the best all around story of the past year, 10 Tim Tebows and Aaron Rodgers put together.

If you like Thor, check out the Thor: The Mighty Avenger collections. Fantastic, fun stuff outside of regular continuity.

If you like Iron Man, check out Invincible Iron Man: The Five Nightmares, by Matt Fraction.

If you want to check out something a little different, check out SHIELD: Architects of Forever by Jonathan Hickman. It's the story of how SHIELD is actually a centuries-old secret society run by people like Leonardo da Vinci and Nicola Tesla.

If you don't start with Waid's run, you could start with Fantastic Four with the first Hickman trade, but outside of the first arc dealing with Reed it starts to get into telling a big story where you might want to just save up and buy all the trades to read at once.

If I want to get into an ongoing Deadpool, which is the best/easiest to start with? I read all of Cable/Deadpool on Marvel DCU so I'm familiar with his shtick, I just don't know which to pick up because there a bajillion of them.

Personally, I'm really fond of the cancelled Deadpool Team-Up. Each issue paired Deadpool with an interesting foil, told a complete story in 22 pages, and featured creative teams that were generally pretty good. I can only recall really disliking a couple of the stories.

For Deadpool proper, I'd recommend you simply buy Deadpool: Dark Reign, which pits Wade against his sometimes-friend-sometimes-nemesis Bullseye, and Deadpool: Monkey Business, which features a monkey in a suit, who fires guns with his feet.

The rest of his series is, outside a few good issues here and there, not worth reading.

Primarily because he's only really interesting when paired with an Elmer Fudd to his Bugs Bunny, be that Cable, Bullseye, or Hit-Monkey. And unfortunately, his series has mostly been about him running around solo, and having uninteresting adventures.

If I want to get into an ongoing Deadpool, which is the best/easiest to start with? I read all of Cable/Deadpool on Marvel DCU so I'm familiar with his shtick, I just don't know which to pick up because there a bajillion of them.

So if I was starting to get into FF then will Waid's run continue into Hickman's run?

Also, I guess I didn't really mean I wouldn't be interested in a long story arc cuz I like investing time into a good story, but moreso I wouldn't want to track down a bunch of interweaving story elements for something to make sense like in a big crossover.

Actually, after Waid's run, J. Michael Straczynski wrote about twenty issues, then Dwayne McDuffie did about ten issues, followed by Mark Millar who wrote about fifteen issues before Hickman took over. I haven't read them all, but I've been told that the JMS, McDuffie, and Millar runs are not required reading and are just not that good overall.

a while ago I made a list of trade paperbacks with corresponding authors and issue numbers for knowledge purposes:

Haven't read a comic in a loooong time. Got 50 bucks to blow at a comic store, looking for some suggestions of TPBs. Thinking of getting the We3 deluxe edition, I already read it but it's such a great book. In interested in anything that's a good read basically, superheroes or not. Some of the comics I have read:

Looking for a new story but something that I won't have to buy a bunch of volumes to finish. Went to look today and couldn't make a decision, saw Dark Knight Returns and the Killing Joke, and Y the Last Man. Also Chuck Jones book which isn't really a comic book but I'm a huge fan of.

Also saw the Usagi Special Edition for 100 bucks which isn't even on Amazon, always seemed like something fun to read.

Superman Birthright is the best Superman story ever.
Batman Black Mirror is fantastic, it will be recommended a lot.
American Vampire only has two trades out so far. Same with Unwritten only having three. Both are some of the best Vertigo books at the moment. And Locke and Key has a small amount of volumes out so far, these are all easy to get into without standing down 10-12 trades like Fables or Walking Dead have.

Fables is really good.
American Vampire is also worthwhile.
Batman: Black Mirror is a stand alone hardcover and you could then check out Snyder's current Batman work.
Animal Man and Swamp Thing are also good series that still have that Vertigo hue.